Listen here: Mark Baker talks about Every Page Is Page One at Intelligent Content 2014. See everypageispageone.com for more information.
Rahel Bailie talks about the Language of Content Strategy at Intelligent Content 2014. See thelanguageofcontentstrategy.com for more information. Listen here:
Listen here: Don Day talks about Connecting Intelligent Content with Micropublishing and Beyond at Intelligent Content 2014. See contelligence.org for more information.
Listen here: Theresa Putkey talks about Diagnosing and Solving Content Problems at Intelligent Content 2014. See Key Pointe Usability Consulting, Inc at keypointe.ca for more info.
Listen here: Kyle Wiens talks about the various ways they gamify their repair manual site, iFixit.com, at Intelligent Content 2014. For more information, see http://www.ifixit.com and Dozuki for more information.
Listen here: Sarah O'Keefe speaks about The Many Facets of Content Strategy at Intelligent Content 2014. See http://scriptorium.com for more information. The Many Facets of Content Strategy from Intelligent Content Conference
Listen here: Marcia Riefer Johnston gives some practical strategies for writing at Intelligent Content 2014. To learn more, see http://writing.rocks/. For a transcription of this interview, see this post on Techwhirl.
Listen here: Marcia Riefer Johnston (see howtowriteeverything.com) interviews me at Intelligent Content 2014 about writing, blogging, and other topics.
I'm guest editing an edition of Intercom that will focus on API documentation (with a planned publication date of September 2014). As guest editor, I need to gather a handful of articles from tech writers with experience in this field. Are you interested in writing an article on API documentation? I have about 8 different topics I hope to cover. See this Google doc for details. If you're interested, add your name to the table below the to...
If you work for a small company (for example, a startup with just a few tech writers), and only need to publish content online, you can forego expensive writing tools and processes and use a much simpler method to write, edit, and publish your technical content. In a nutshell, the method I describe here involves using Markdown syntax in Google docs to write and edit content, and then leverages stackedit.io to convert the content to HTML b...
I've been reading some science books lately and visiting a few museums. These experiences have led me to the following question: How can we know something that is totally unfamiliar to us, such that we've never experienced or conceptualized it in the least degree before? This question is more philosophical than practical, but it does play a part in our role as technical writers. To consider the whole scenario of the unknown, think of some...
I am rarely impressed by mission statements, but I find the first paragraph of the recent reformulation of STC's mission statement refreshing. It defines the practice of technical communication as "the discipline of transforming complex information into usable content for products, processes, and services" (President's Midterm Report). The mission statement does continue on to address other less interesting topics, but that's beyond my co...
For the past year I've been working at a gamification startup company called Badgeville in Silicon Valley. Badgeville is one of a handful of companies specializing in “gamification.” When you gamify an application, you integrate game elements into non-game contexts to better engage your users. If done right, gamifying an application can increase the engagement of your users by up to 48%, compared to only 28% for those who don't use gamifi...
A reader writes, Let me start by saying that I am a huge fan! I've been following your blog for many years and together with Mark Baker's and Scriptorium blogs, you've taught me 90% of everything I know about tech comm and documentation. The problem at hand: Documentation for our biggest product has grown enormous over the years. The growth was organic, as more and more features and complexity was added. Our online help for the product cu...
While riding home on the train today, I was thinking about directions I want to take my career. I actually don't have any presentations pending, no expected slides or research due (other than an article on gamification). As I thought about it, I realized that I want to dive more deeply into API documentation. The response to the API Workshop I'm helping organize has been really encouraging. Already we have 45 people signed up (with a cap ...
